The Giggles

I love finding out that someone has an unusual name. It's always a good conversation opener. Roya told me she was from Iran. That prompted me to tell her about an amazing bus driver I met the other day. It turned out he was from Iran, after I'd been unable to guess from his accent.

He was a really friendly guy who seemed to be on first name terms with every passenger who boarded the bus. I was sitting at the front and chatting to him about this and that. He has one son here who has just graduated, and another in Portugal, where he lived before coming to England. That prompted me to ask him how many languages he spoke. He told me that he was fluent in Farsi, of course, and French and German which were taught at school, and Turkish, and then Portuguese of course, and Spanish, because of his proximity to Spain then, and now English. His English was near perfect! I felt humbled.

After sharing that I asked Roya if I could take her picture. She said yes despite telling me she never lets anyone take her photograph. And then she kept breaking out into fits of giggles. "I look such a mess," she kept telling me. I think she does dishevelled rather well!